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Lillian Faderman
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 Odd
Girls and Twilight Lovers : A History of Lesbian Life in
Twentieth-Century America by
Lillian Faderman
For those readers unfamiliar with Stonewall,
Lesbian Nation, Daughters of Bilitis, lipsticks, or the difference
between "romantic friendships" and lesbian-feminists, or
for those readers who want to learn more, Odd Girls and
Twilight Lovers provides an accessible, wide-ranging,
meticulously researched history. Using information drawn from
varied sources including literature, sociological and
psychological studies, newspaper articles, military pamphlets, and
movies, Lillian Faderman sets out to show the metamorphosis of a
movement. At times the generalizations that occur as a result work
against her stated acknowledgment of the diversity among
individual lesbians, yet these generalizations also serve to show
the broader sweeps and clashes in what has been a rapidly changing
and often tumultuous history.
Beginning with nineteenth-century romantic
friendships and the first all-women's colleges, progressing
through the sexologists of the 1920s and the openness of the war
years, on to the McCarthy era, the radical 1960s and 70s, and the
more diversified 1980s and 90s, Lillian Faderman documents
"the extent to which sexuality, and especially sexual
categories, can be dependent upon a broad range of factors that
are extraneous to 'sexual drive.' " Perhaps the most
revolutionary and exciting thing about this history, beyond the
very fact of its existence, is its ability to present lesbianism
not only as a sexual orientation, but as a movement that has been
both affected and defined by a constantly shifting economic,
political, and cultural climate. -- Erica Bauermeister From
500
Great Books by Women
 Chloe
Plus Olivia : An Anthology of Lesbian Literature from the
Seventeenth Century to the Present by
Lillian Faderman (Compiler)
This landmark work is the most complete
compilation of its kind, offering an enlightened view of a diverse
and long-neglected genre. Arranged in thematic sections are a
generous and wide range of selections--fiction, poetry, and essays
from writers past and present, including Emily Dickinson, Carson
McCullers, Christina Rossetti, and Rita Mae Brown.
"Faderman has compiled a homosexual 'tour
de force' with this anthology. Ranging from Emily Dickinson to
Audre Lorde to Pat Califia, this generous volume encompasses
psychoanalytic theory (Sigmund Freud), historical documents, a
play, poetry, and short stories. The poetic inclusions offer the
largest assortment of both encoded and straightforward lesbian
poetry that is available in one book. Faderman's notes for each
author offer insight (the clitoral imagery in Emily Dickinson's
poetry, Angelina Weld Grimke's background). The short stories are
humorous, romantic, sexy, sad, and touching in turn. Altogether
this book is worth much more than its price because it offers many
hours of entertaining reading for any woman who has ever been
attracted to another woman." -- Anonymous Review
 To
Believe in Women: What Lesbians Have Done For America - A History by
Lillian Faderman
Taking up where her
1981 classic, Surpassing
the Love of Men, left off, Lillian Faderman reveals that
many of the early leaders who fought for women's suffrage, higher
education for women, and women's entrance into "male"
professions would in today's parlance be called lesbians:
"women who lived in committed relationships with other
women." Unencumbered by the duties of marriage and
motherhood, they were more likely to have the time, energy, and
freedom to work for women's rights. In fact, they were more or
less obliged to try to better women's lives, Faderman argues, for
there was no man to represent them at the polls or support them
financially. (Although Elizabeth Cady Stanton's husband and seven
children failed to distract her from the cause, her friend Susan
B. Anthony used to help her with the children and housework before
they settled down for political strategy meetings.) During the
Depression, when women's social and economic gains began to
dwindle, it was these "single" women who kept
professions open while married women were being fired in favor of
men. Faderman gracefully surveys a century of advancement and
retreat, shedding light on America's debt to women-loving women. --Regina
Marler
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The Archives is committed to gathering and
preserving materials by and about lesbians of all classes,
ethnicities, races and experiences. Included are personal letters
and scrapbooks, lesbian artwork, manuscripts, books, records,
newspapers, magazines, photographs, videotapes, flyers, papers of
lesbian organizations, private papers, and even clothing, such as
softball uniforms from the 1940s and 50s. -- Lillian Faderman
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Interview by Kristin Keith for Philadelphia's City
Paper
Excerpt:
Did you encounter any resistance in getting your
materials?
I didn’t at the archives. Part of the reason
for that may be that when I was asked what I was doing I generally
said that I was working on women pioneers but I didn’t use the
"L word." They wouldn’t have used the "L
word" about themselves, in fact, because it would have been
associated with the French lesbienne, which in French novels and
poetry of the 19th century suggested decadence and they didn’t
think they were decadent at all. The problem that I encountered
was a historical problem, and what I mean by that is that despite
the fact that I found some incredible letters, many of them
clearly erotic and others very passionate, although not
specifically erotic, I know there must have been much more...
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By Lillian Faderman, GLQ, A Journal of
Lesbian and Gay Studies 5.3 (1999) 315-329
Excerpt:
In the 1880s, early in her career, the American
suffrage leader Anna Howard Shaw sported what was at that time a
distinctly mannish hairdo. When someone snidely asked her in a
roomful of people why she wore her hair so short, she retorted,
"I will admit frankly that it is a birthmark. I was born with
short hair." Shaw was obviously intending to be clever,
but she had unintentionally delivered a Krafft-Ebingism. It was
only a few years before her witticism that the sexologists had
defined the female sexual invert as congenitally "a man
trapped in a woman's body." Whether or not Shaw was aware of
how she had revealed herself as a sexual invert, shortly after
this incident she began to grow her hair longer and to arrange it
in a decorous bun--a style she continued to wear until her death
thirty years later. As she later observed of her willingness to
adopt a more conventional hairstyle: "No woman in public life
can afford to make herself conspicuous by an eccentricity of dress
and appearance. If she does so she suffers for it herself, which
may not disturb her, and to a greater degree, for the cause
she represents, which should disturb her." Shaw
saw the suffrage cause as so crucial that she would make whatever
concessions to conformity she was convinced she must make in
public. As her personal correspondence indicates, however, at home
with her lover, Lucy Anthony, she was as butch as she pleased...
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Names Index:
A B
C D
E F
G H
I J
K L
M N
O P
Q R
S T
U V
W X
Y Z
| Authors
Index | Scholars
Index |
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